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The German annexation of South-West Africa was a more intolerably humiliating and provocative act of aggression; it is one that only now—after the territory has been recovered by the brilliant campaign of the Union Army under General Louis Botha—can be forgiven Lord Granville. Prior to 1883 the natives of Damaraland and Namaqualand, suspicious of the intentions of Germany, had petitioned to be taken under British protection. Downing Street experienced a temporary uneasiness, but Bismarck’s assurance that Germany had no intention of establishing Crown colonies in Africa, extinguished the fleeting distrust. The Cape Colony was not so easily satisfied. A British Commissioner, who was appointed to confer with the native chiefs, reported favourably upon the proposal to officially confirm the authority of the Cape Government over the region extending northward from the Orange River to Portuguese Angoland. Sir Bartle Frere, the Governor of Cape Colony, urged upon the home Government the desirability of the step, and the Colonial Office decided upon the formal acquisition of the port at Walfisch Bay. Bismarck, hesitating to commit what might be construed as a deliberately hostile act, invited Great Britain to state her intentions with regard to the rest of the south-west territory, but failing to receive any definite reply, he decided upon bold if impudent measures, and in April, 1884, the Chancellor announced that the territory north of the Orange River was under the protection of the German Empire. As Bryden says, in his History of South Africa, “it was an unfriendly act, carried out in an unpleasant manner, and the British Colonists in South Africa are not soon likely to allow it to pass out of remembrance.” It not only destroyed the symmetry of a British South Africa, and gave Germany rights in territories marching with British colonies, but it added 322,450 square miles of African territory to the German Colonial Empire, for which a Bremen merchant named Luderitz parted with a hundred pounds and a score of old muskets.